Improving Teaching and Learning in Universities

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1 B U S I N E S S / H I G H E R i s s u e 18 November E D U C A T I O N R O U N D B - H E R T T A B L E N E W S Improving Teaching and Learning in Universities The urgent challenge of world-class university teaching and learning Guest Editor Professor Donald Markwell Warden,Trinity College, The University of Melbourne The urgent need to enhance learning and therefore teaching - in Australian universities is increasingly recognised. In the competitive global knowledge economy, the knowledge and skills of a nation s people will significantly determine the country s well-being. This makes the quality of learning the acquisition by students of knowledge, skills, and also values - in universities of the utmost importance for the community as well as for each individual student. This special issue of B-HERT NEWS draws on research and practical experience from authors in Australia, Britain, Hong Kong, Singapore, and the United States to address key issues related to improving the quality of teaching and learning in universities. Perspectives vary on such issues as the connection between research and teaching, the problems and opportunities created by large classes, and much else. These articles reflect the benefits that can flow for learning from well-considered use of Information Technology, and from the growing diversity of student cohorts reflecting, of course, the fact that students learn a great deal from each other, as well as from those who teach them. Above all, there is near-unanimity on the need for teaching to be focussed on learning outcomes, rather than on the teaching process itself, and especially on engaging each individual student in their own active learning, including especially through discussion and debate - in refining the skills of independent thinking and of clear communication which any university education should encourage. The teacher as performer, though valued by many in the past, appears now to be largely out of fashion. Is there a danger of some student-centred approaches being insufficiently challenging to students supportively challenging, but challenging nonetheless? Many factors shape the quality of learning. These include the aptitude and motivation of individual students and their own approaches to learning (including to collaborative learning), the quality and diversity of the student body of which they are part, the curriculum they study, the calibre and strategies of those who teach them, the size and nature of their classes, the ways in which learning is encouraged by assessment processes and feedback, the learning resources (such as libraries, laboratories, and

2 information technology) available and used, the scope for learning in the classroom to be enriched by learning outside the classroom (including in residential and extra-curricular settings), and the wider institutional and social context. Much has been done, and is being done, to improve teaching and learning in Australian universities - from teacher training and other professional development programs, to awards for outstanding teachers, to tying some of the funding of faculties or departments to evaluations of their teaching quality. The recent Nelson reform package and the policies of individual universities, reflected in these pages, suggest encouragingly - that the emphasis on enhancing teaching and learning is increasing. Yet the decline in small-group teaching in Australian universities, and the diminished opportunities for individual contact between students and academics, has made all the starker the contrast between the world s best practice in teaching and learning, characterized by a high degree of individual attention in a collegial learning community within and outside the classroom, and the reality in Australian universities, with far worse and worsening student:staff ratios. This poses an acute challenge to all those with an interest in ensuring that Australia has higher education fit for the 21st century *. Part of the challenge is to think afresh about the content of what our students learn, and what needs to be done to encourage and assist them to gain that liberal and internationally-focussed education which far more than most realise - is necessary, no doubt often as a prelude to more specialised professional education, to be fully prepared for careers and for citizenship in this rapidly changing world. Several of the authors here stress the importance of teaching practice being based on research into what works and what does not, and not simply on hunches and guesswork. While Australian institutions place considerable reliance on largelynumeric student evaluations of courses and on other aspects of the institution, much would be gained from more qualitative research into what Australian students find really helps them learn qualitative research of the kind reflected in the Harvard and Oxford studies presented here. Such research should form part of the genuinely international conversation about university teaching and learning which a number of our authors encourage, and to which this special issue seeks to make its own contribution Australian university educators contributing to an international conversation, and also learning from it, for the benefit of students. * This argument is elaborated in Undergraduate education for the 21st century: Australia at the crossroads, Trinity Paper No. 20, 2002, and University education: Australia s urgent need for reform, Trinity Paper No. 27, 2003, both at I am deeply grateful for the tireless work of Mr Geoff Browne, my Research Assistant, and Ms Kathryn McGrath, my Personal Assistant, without whom this issue of B-HERT NEWS would not exist. Emerging issues for teaching and learning in Australian universities Professor Craig McInnis Centre for the Study of Higher Education The University of Melbourne The importance of teaching and learning in universities has shifted from routine and somewhat token acknowledgment in government policy to a central place in the higher education policy agenda. A series of government initiatives over the last decade has incrementally raised the profile of teaching, but much of the action was already underway within the faculties and departments. The conjunction of a dramatic growth in student enrolments, the introduction of new information technologies, and the intense market competition for students in the early 1990s put universities on notice with respect to the quality of their teaching and learning. Despite the tensions created by the increase in class sizes, the pervasiveness of reward systems that favour research over teaching, and the overall decline in resources, our universities have managed to maintain Australia s international reputation for 2

3 innovation and quality in university teaching. However, the more emphatic stance on the improvement of teaching and learning in the recent reform package has the potential for taking the quality of teaching in Australian universities to a new level. How and with what success universities, business and government combine to achieve a strong knowledge economy will depend in particular on some major shifts in the way they interpret and respond to the changing needs and expectations of undergraduate students. This includes in particular the design and management of student learning experiences. How teaching and learning are changing Many of the changes in the way students learn at university are well known although the nature and extent of their impact is not. As with almost every aspect of society the digital revolution has permeated universities, especially development and adoption of flexible delivery with web-based resources and online learning. The clearest indication of change is the commonplace use of technologies in lecture theatres and laboratories, and the routine design of courses on the assumption that students will have ready access to the internet. Students are now more likely to study in multiple settings: in large lecture theatres, in groups on collaborative exercises, in computer laboratories with two or three others in an online tutorial, or simply working at home alone. They are less likely to spend significant time in small group tutorials, or to have one-to-one consultation with their lecturers. On the other hand, they often have access to the personal home pages of their lecturers and easy access to comprehensive learning support services. While students are increasingly using information and computer-based technologies it is not necessarily in ways that enhance their engagement with the learning experience. The extent to which the management of these flexible learning experiences using these resources is directed by changing conceptions of the way students learn is not clear. Likewise, our knowledge of the nature and extent of student use of technologies and its impact on their learning outcomes is still sketchy. Academics have on the whole embraced the opportunities that new technologies provide. However, their biggest challenge has been the increasing range of differences in student preparation, experiences and abilities in any given classroom. Meeting the needs of the students is almost impossible without an informed understanding of their approaches to learning. While there is still a lot of ground to make up when it comes to basic principles of good teaching, there is clear evidence that students are more likely now than just a decade ago to encounter academics who demonstrate enthusiasm for their subjects. They are also providing clear goals and objectives for their subjects, and telling student how they are supposed to learn in the subject. To a large extent, much of these measurable improvements in the basics of good teaching have been driven by government and university accountability processes. Enhancing teaching and learning The impact of technologies on the nature of student learning has not, however, been matched in other respects. It would be misleading to suggest that there has been a wholesale shift in approaches to university teaching. The quality of learning experiences for many students remains patchy at best. Many continue to have a flawed experience that is fundamentally the same as for previous generations, and sometimes worse. The positive news is that three broad developments are emerging and, with the right policy drivers, they are likely to have an impact on the mainstream of learning experiences. First, the notion of understanding and valuing the total student experience has recently been revived partly to counter the likelihood of fragmented patterns of learning sometimes generated by flexible delivery as an end in itself. Since the initial surge in the adoption of new technologies, universities have become aware of the significance of the social context of student learning. Engagement with learning occurs where students feel they are part of a group of students and academics committed to learning, where learning outside the classroom is considered as important as the timetabled and structured experience, and where 3

4 students actively connect to the subject matter. Where once it was assumed that students would naturally form natural support groups it is now clear that the mix of part-time work, idiosyncratic timetables, and the accessibility of web-based resources requires lecturers and course designers to design learning experiences that encourage students to develop informal networks. Second, and obviously related, is the growth in student-centred and active learning approaches. This has been largely led by medical schools where problem-based learning is now widely incorporated or in fact totally embraced in the leading schools. There is also now an emerging effort, especially in research-intensive universities, to connect research to undergraduate teaching, and the integration of practical experience in professional courses is more systematic. Third, there is a growing awareness of the importance of evidence-based approaches to the organisation of learning experiences. That means universities and academics routinely collecting evidence about how much their students have learned and modifying approaches accordingly. This has partly reinvigorated the demand to stick with first principles in guiding the improvement of teaching and learning. We know from research that undergraduate students learn best when they: work with other students in a group whose main purpose is learning; get timely and informative feedback on their work; spend adequate time and focus on learning tasks; and are able to consult with academics about their study. These basics continue to hold true in the digital classroom. Without evidence-based approaches to teaching and learning, the improvement of teaching becomes a hit-and-miss exercise: and without systematic monitoring of student performance and progress there is little chance of institutional learning. It is particularly easy, for example, to confuse the notion of active learning and engagement with social activities as an end in themselves, and to slide into 4 programs promoting busyness with little effect on the quality of learning outcomes. What we need to do First, the notion of understanding and valuing the total student experience has recently been revived partly to counter the likelihood of fragmented patterns of learning sometimes generated by flexible delivery as an end in itself. Since the initial surge in the adoption of new technologies, universities have become aware of the significance of the social context of student learning. The lack of alignment between university reward systems and the core activity of academics is the biggest challenge facing government and universities. The fact is that most academics believe that teaching should be rewarded as much as research, but only a small minority consider that to be the case in their own university, and as one observer noted, money talks on campus as elsewhere, and the money says "do research". Likewise, most academics believe that academics ought to have some form of training in teaching but most think it is not necessarily for them personally, and up until recently there has been little career incentive to do so. Interestingly, academics are generally not very positive about their experience of training and professional development within their universities. For some time now most universities have been running compulsory induction programs for academics new to university teaching and, in the near future, formal institutional certification will become the norm. How well this impacts on the quality of the student experience in the future remains to be seen. A similarly challenging task is to target resources at creating forms of learning appropriate to the new realities of student lives that will connect them with the academics and with other students in a social learning experience. Learning communities provide the advantages of traditionally small cohesive groups of students, moving together through their course as a cohort. Replicating this experience in some form is an achievable goal for all universities regardless of size, mission or student profile. Making effective use of ICT resources with this as a starting point would be a big step forward for many universities.

5 Australia has for many years led the way. Our experts are highly sought after in the UK and Europe where Australia is acknowledged as a prime source of research and innovative practice in teaching and learning. There is no shortage of dissemination of new ideas in the last five years or so. Yet, as one who has played an ongoing role in that process at the national level, it is painfully obvious at seminars and workshops around the country that a significant number of academics remain seriously unaffected by national and institutional efforts to improve the quality of teaching. What we need most right now is to develop a distinctive national approach to the improvement of teaching and learning that ensures that the fundamentals of good teaching and learning are embedded in everyday practice. National efforts in the form of new bureaucratic structures and programs will amount to little, however, without substantial resources targeted directly at the quality of the mainstream of academic practice and not simply on innovations. One estimate suggests that only 12 per cent or so of academics in the US are influenced by the dissemination of innovations in teaching to seriously rethink their approaches to teaching and learning. Australia is possibly well ahead, but unless national interventions have an impact ultimately on the ways in which the bulk of staff and students treat each other minute by minute, then change will continue to be confined to a minority of enthusiasts. Harvard students learning in and outside the classroom Professor Richard J Light Graduate School of Education and John F Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University Author Photo Martha Stewart Please contact the B-Hert Secretariat on or if you require a hard copy of this article. 5

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8 The Oxford Tutorial Extracts from The Oxford Tutorial: Thanks, you taught me how to think, edited by David Palfreyman, Oxford Centre for Higher Education Policy Studies (OxCHEPS), Reprinted with permission. Better than any alternative Professor Richard Dawkins Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science, University of Oxford, and Professorial Fellow, New College, Oxford I continue to think the Oxford Tutorial is better than any alternative on offer. The virtues of individual attention are still there in full. A young relative of mine has recently graduated in Biological Science from another prestigious university. She loved her time there, and enjoyed lectures by excellent scientists. But one problem emerged at the end, which would have been inconceivable at Oxford (or Cambridge). When she came to seek a job and needed testimonials from her teachers, it proved almost impossible to find a quorum who had the faintest idea who she was. At Oxford she could have called upon half a dozen tutors, all of whom would have been on Christian name terms with her (both ways) and all of whom would have been intimately familiar with her work and her strengths. The Oxford Tutorial today may fall a little short of my rose-tinted recollections, but it is still greatly superior to the so-called tutorial (actually usually a seminar or class) in any other university except Cambridge. comes not from listening to what the tutor has to say (as if a tutorial were a private lecture), but from preparing to write essays, from writing them, and from arguing about them in an unrushed session afterwards. It is the feeling that one s essay will be valued and discussed for a whole hour that makes the writing seem worthwhile. It gives the undergraduate an inkling of how it might feel to be the world authority on a subject. If anything, this valuable educational experience might come better with a Junior Tutor than with a senior scholar who really is the world authority and whose prestige and reputation might seem to quell debate. The important thing to retain from Oxford s unique tradition is the whole hour of a tutor s attention, with nobody else present. Not only should Oxford and Cambridge find ways of making the system economically sustainable, but also the model could with advantage be exported to other universities. The Socratic method: teaching students to think Mr Robin Lane Fox Fellow in Ancient History New College, Oxford I still think the Oxford one-to-one tutorial was the making of my entire career. But if I am honest, I think this might have been so even if my tutors had known very little more than I did myself. The important thing was the knowledge that my essay, when I eventually completed it, would be the object of one hour s undivided and serious attention from somebody qualified to judge it and discuss its topic with me at least as an equal. The educational value 8 The Oxford Tutorial brings one or two pupils into contact with a single teacher in their subject. There are off days, and occasionally a teacher or pupil does not, or cannot, try. The off days, which are rare, are not the measure of the system. It is not just a source of information, of which there are so many sources, on and off line. It aims to teach pupils something else: to think.

9 The Oxford tutorial: the students perspective Dr James Clark formerly Fellow in Medieval History, Brasenose College, Oxford and now Lecturer in Early Modern and Northern European History, Department of Historical Studies, University of Bristol Of course, a genuine insight into tutorial teaching can only really be gained from speaking to those students who are currently studying in Oxford, before distance, dementia or the desire for revenge has distorted their views. To this end over the 1999/2000 academic year, I interviewed no fewer than forty undergraduates to find out what they thought about the tutorials they had experienced. They were drawn from six different colleges roughly a fifth of the total number and from a variety of arts and science subjects. There was a mix of first-, second-, third- and fourth-year students, and a little over half of the interviewees were women. Their response was enthusiastic: tutorials continue to play a prominent part in the life of any student at Oxford and there is no doubt that they think about them a great deal, how they work (and sometimes do not work) as a way of learning and teaching. Their views should be of interest to both critics and supporters of the system. In the first place, it is very clear from the students comments that there is much about tutorial teaching that has changed, and continues to change in contemporary Oxford. For the most part, of course, the tutorial does still set the pattern for the students week; it is still their principal point-of-contact with their tutors and the focus of most (if not all) of their written assignments. Generally speaking it is also still a college-based activity, allowing students to form a close relationship with others of their cohort in the same subject area. But in other respects it has become something very different. The traditional one-on-one tutorial, between a tutor and a single student who reads an essay or presents some other assignment and receives (often peremptory) feedback is undoubtedly a thing of the past. It is now very common for students to take a course of tutorials in pairs, and many of those interviewed had also experienced them in groups of three or four. In the Sciences, groups can be larger still. This seems to have been a welcome change. Most agree that there is far more to be gained from group discussion than from the somewhat stilted exchanges between a tutor and a single student. Generally, these larger tutorials have allowed a less formal and more natural atmosphere to develop in which students find it easier to express their views. In many cases, the role of the essay (or other written assignment) in the tutorial has also changed. In many of the arts subjects it is now common for students to submit their written work prior to the tutorial, so whilst it does still form the basis of the discussion there is no time lost to a formal reading. In groups of three or four, it is often the case that the tutor will invite each student to give a brief presentation of their views on the subject as they have emerged in the preparation of the essay, before opening up the tutorial to a wider discussion. Once again, most students see this as a change for the better. Reading aloud has long been unpopular, both on practical it uses up valuable time and pedagogic grounds, tending as it does to reinforce the division between themselves and the tutor. In a less formally structured setting where no assignment is read in its entirety, students say they have found the confidence to enter fully into discussion with their tutors, to challenge interpretations and test out ideas of their own. Perhaps the only problem from the students point of view is that it is now difficult to find an opportunity to discuss the specific strengths and weaknesses of their own written work. There is a danger that with the decline of oneon-one teaching we lose the opportunity to offer the kind of detailed, in-depth advice to an individual that was always a distinctive feature of the traditional tutorial. Of course, the inner workings of a tutorial are not always (if ever) familiar to students when they first come up to Oxford. Many admitted that they had arrived with the image of an arrogant, authoritarian tutor whose only aim was to expose the intellectual weakness of his students. Some said they had benefited from the Student Survival Kit and other similar advice booklets issued by a number of colleges, which try to de-bunk some of the more 9

10 pervasive myths about student life. There are not yet enough of these manuals, however, to counteract some of the more disturbing impressions conveyed in the media and colluded in by the more mischievous alumni. New students remain nervous about speaking in front of their tutor, expecting the tutorial to be something similar to their original interview. They are also uncomfortable about confronting an acknowledged expert in their field, fearing they will find themselves out of their depth. There is also a suspicion that the tutorial does serve as one, unspoken mode of assessment, even if a written assignment is not given a formal mark. For many though the greatest anxiety is quite simply not to know exactly what it is that their tutor expects from them in each tutorial. Most of the students I spoke to said that their understanding of tutorials had grown only slowly, largely through a process of trial and error. Like many aspects of Oxford life, it seems that many tutors themselves still regard the art of the tutorial as something that cannot be taught and that understanding comes only through some mystical process of self-realization. Some tutors especially the younger generation of college fellows do now give their students guidance on how to approach and how to make the most of their tutorials. But it seems in most cases it is only after two or three terms, and sometimes after Mods or Prelims [first- or secondyear examinations], that students say they are entirely sure about what they expect to do in, and take away from, their tutorials. Once they have mastered the art, there is no doubt that most of the students do find their tutorials to be a great source of stimulation. Many draw a contrast with their experiences at school where direct access to tutors was limited and where class sizes and timetable demands meant the syllabus was covered only superficially and at a break-neck pace. Those I interviewed especially appreciated the degree of focus possible in a tutorial setting, where the finer points of a subject, its factual content but also its further implications could be painstakingly picked Some liked it best if the tutorial became a testing-ground for ideas, an opportunity to identify problems and raise questions. Others preferred there to be a conscious debate over one, or a cluster of issues. If these discussions become heated then so much the better from the students point of view. apart. At the same time, students also enthuse about the breadth of discussion possible in their tutorials. In comparison to lectures, or seminars that they often find contrived, in their weekly exchanges with their tutor and one or more partner they found there is far greater scope to explore a wide range of themes. There is a marked preference for those tutors who do not set any very specific agenda for discussion, and when spur-of-the-moment ideas can be pursued to their logical conclusion. Some liked it best if the tutorial became a testing-ground for ideas, an opportunity to identify problems and raise questions. Others preferred there to be a conscious debate over one, or a cluster of issues. If these discussions become heated then so much the better from the students point of view; as one of them put it, the best tutorials are like Newsnight with the tutor as Paxman. Either way, it is agreed that the advantage of the tutorial when it is working like this is that discussion is open, and open-ended, and there is every opportunity for the students to choose the direction or focus of it for themselves. It would be wrong, of course, to claim that current students opinions of tutorial teaching are unwaveringly positive. Most maintain that the character and quality of tutorials varies enormously across the University, and that much may depend on a chance meeting with a charismatic tutor in a single term. There was a suspicion in this author s opinion, unfounded - that there is more to be gained from a tutorial led by a graduate student or a younger tutor than from a more mature, established scholar. Perhaps a more convincing point is that the great strength of the tutorial, that is to say the opportunity it provides for interaction between tutor and student on a personal level, can also on occasion serve as its greatest weakness. It does demand that the student can establish a good (and good-natured) working relationship with their tutor and, for a variety of reasons as much to do with the student as with tutor themselves, this is not always the case. Some students also made the more specific criticism that, whilst tutorials are an important forum for debate 10

11 and discussion, they are poor preparation for the examinations (whether Mods, Prelims or Schools) themselves. In their view tutorials do nothing to expand their knowledge of their subject and yet it is this subject knowledge that forms the basis of the examinations. One interviewee opined: tutorials have taught me to argue about anything, but not how to pass the exam. A small minority of students also raised a further point of criticism; that the tutorial system as practiced at Oxford is inherently gendered, favouring styles of learning that are more natural to men than to women. In their view the emphasis on debate and discussion in a tutorial setting places male students at a definite advantage given that young men tend to be far more self-confident, willing to argue and, quite simply, louder than their female counterparts. Certainly, it is important to register this concern and to recognize that students who are naturally shy, whatever their gender, can all too easily be marginalized in a lively tutorial discussion. But it would be dangerous to suggest that any of these capabilities could be inherent in only one gender. Generally, current Oxford students are enthusiastic advocates for tutorial teaching. They value them as a prominent and stimulating part of their course. Initially, the prospect of debate and discussion with expert tutors does seem daunting, and it is only through the on-going cycle of weekly meetings that most have been able to master the art. But in time students do find them to be an engaging even exciting means of developing and expanding their understanding of their subject. If anything the opportunities for wide-ranging discussion and debate have increased in recent years as the formal one-on-one structure of tutorials has been modified. The tutorial in contemporary Oxford has evolved into a dynamic, flexible and popular method of teaching. Perhaps the only (slight) disappointment is that the eccentrics so prominent in the past are now so decidedly thin on the ground. Making good teaching a high priority again: strategies for change Professor Paul Ramsden Pro Vice-Chancellor (Teaching & Learning) The University of Sydney Over the last ten years, Australian universities have applied a more enterprising approach to their core business of generating excellent graduates. As a result, courses are more relevant. Generic attributes are embedded in many curricula. Innovations have flourished. Graduates are more satisfied. Accountability for teaching quality has soared. The days when universities tolerated poor teaching behaviour and showed contempt for students have gone forever. In difficult circumstances, our universities in recent times have punched well above their weight. On any usual measure of performance, the Australian university teaching industry has been a story of achievement. Much remains to be done. A combination of underfunding, restrictions on competitiveness, and a onesize-fits-all view of what a university should look like have squeezed the room for better teaching. There is still teaching that is substandard. There are still lecturers who are unrecognised for their excellence. There are still heads and deans whose skills in managing academics for high quality teaching are deficient and who consequently limit the performance of their staff. A new spirit of evidence-based teaching practice, built on the findings of research into university learning, has only begun to take hold against a sea of prejudice, hunches, opinions and guesswork. Progress has not been helped by those who would impose further regulation and uniformity on an already tightly fettered sector. Denying universities the opportunity to offer diverse experiences to students is a recipe for mediocre instruction, 11

12 disheartened faculty and a set of lowest common denominator graduate skills. Why should we bother about improving teaching? Mainly because good university teaching produces graduates who are more useful in the community. It makes people delight in embracing change. It inspires, it creates a vision of the future, and it equips them for a life of learning and service. The best teaching aims to stimulate students to greater mental effort under the intellectual stimulus of being part of a group of very able learners. These qualities are especially salient in research-intensive universities, and they go a long way to explaining why the graduates of our leading institutions are so attractive to employers. These graduates know a lot of detailed content; they can learn new knowledge quickly; they can think for themselves. In A.N. Whitehead s words when he opened the Harvard Business School, the university imparts knowledge, but it imparts it imaginatively. As Whitehead realised, it is precisely the attribute of acquiring knowledge imaginatively that makes universities and their graduates so valuable to business and commerce. To provide space for universities to pursue good teaching free from trivial regulation, we must accept that its support should reflect the mission of each university. The needs of students and staff at a small regional university with little research at international standard will be quite different from those in a large research-led institution. We must also recognise that we need better internal systems for managing the quality of university teaching. In particular, this implies practical methods for evaluating teaching quality, genuine reward and recognition, carefully targeted support for improving teaching, and strong leadership all the way from the CEO to the coordinator of a course. In appraising and rewarding good university teaching, it is not enough to provide teaching awards and training courses for individual academics. The old methods of running optional staff development workshops and advising lecturers on technique are simply not powerful enough to meet the challenge. The experience at Sydney has been that improving teaching quality requires multiple levels of intervention (individual academic, course, school, faculty). Resolute management, explicit policies and a clear vision are needed to make step changes in teaching quality. At Sydney, these initiatives have included: Required fundamental training in teaching for all new academics New promotions policies that recognise leadership and scholarship in teaching Rigorous, peer-reviewed audits of teaching and learning performance Teaching awards that require the exercise of an evidence-based, professional approach to teaching as well as basic competence Performance-based funding of teaching, deploying approximately $4.5m annually to reward good practice Financial rewards to academics for publications and scholarship in university teaching A $1m teaching improvement fund to address recommendations for development identified in reviews and a $4m teaching equipment fund to improve infrastructure Strategic investment in e-learning and graduate attributes development Large increases in the number of academics studying for formal qualifications in university teaching Formal benchmarking of teaching quality and academic quality assurance with leading international research universities Mandatory annual surveys of the student experience of courses and facilities, linked to funding and Academic Board Reviews In the four years since we started to put these strategies in place, we have seen demand for Sydney undergraduate places increase substantially relative to our competitors. Simultaneously, our students have reported significant improvements in their levels of satisfaction. Teaching is once again a high priority in Australia s first university. How can we improve university teaching across the whole system, and produce the kind of graduates from every university that Australia needs to be competitive on world markets? The proposed National Institute for Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, one of the more imaginative ideas in the Nelson reform package, may provide a solution. A visionary development, it has the potential to bring a coherent approach to 12

13 improving learning and teaching in higher education. It will be critically important for the Institute to be inclusive, recognising diversity in the university system and different models of good teaching. It must be ready to challenge some articles of faith, such as the idea that all academics in all universities must be world-class researchers to be good teachers. The Institute will need to work with the academic grain rather than across it, avoiding a regulatory and bureaucratic approach and involving disciplines and professional associations from the start. Remembering the experience at the University of Sydney, it should emphasise benchmarking international standards and vigorously promote good practice in the management of evidence-based university teaching. The National Institute represents an opportunity not to be missed to consolidate Australia s recent performance in improving university teaching. Properly handled, it could make Australia a world leader in the business of producing graduates for an uncertain tomorrow. What do the best teachers do? Professor Ken Bain Professor of History and Director, Center for Teaching Excellence New York University For the last fifteen years, my colleagues and I have been exploring the thinking and practices of highly successful college and university teachers. We sought to identify and study instructors who have had a sustained, substantial, and positive influence on the way students think, act, and feel. We identified more than sixty professors who have experienced exceptional success in fostering remarkable student learning, interviewed them and their students, observed them teach, reviewed their students work and subsequent careers, studied course materials, videotaped classes, studied those recordings, and drew our conclusions (Ken Bain, What the Best College Teachers Do. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004). Anyone who expects a simple list of do s and don t will be terribly disappointed with our study and its conclusions. One can t teach well by the numbers anymore than one can expect to become a great artist by painting in that fashion. Excellence in teaching requires deep thought and often profound and subtle changes in the way we think about the nature of both teaching and learning. We discovered two types of qualities what we called Rembrandt s brush strokes and Rembrandt s insights that seemed to account for the success they were having. To be a Dutch Master, one must learn Rembrandt s brush strokes, but that necessary condition is still insufficient. One must also develop Rembrandt s insights. Similarly, great teachers must master a variety of techniques brush strokes but they must also develop important insights into the nature of teaching and learning. Two brush strokes appeared most frequently in the teachers we studied: The ability to talk well and the capacity to stimulate a conversation. While both of those abilities with a variety of specific techniques too numerous to discuss here made a significant difference in creating a strong learning environment, neither could carry the day. They worked because they emerged amidst complex and profound conceptions of both teaching and human learning. The best teachers conceived of teaching as anything they might do to foster sustained and substantial changes in the way students think, act, or feel, without doing them any major harm. While that may sound like a natural way of thinking about teaching, it isn t the way many college and university educators understand what it means to teach. Instead, conventional teachers are likely to view their responsibility in the classroom as simply a performance, something they do to students. In that view, they can teach well even if students never learn. In contrast, our subjects thought that they didn t teach unless their students did learn. That seemingly simple yet complex distinction had a deep influence on everything they did. Even more profound, the best teachers had developed notions of what it means to learn in their respective disciplines and of how and why human 13

14 beings do learn. They had asked themselves what they wanted their students to be able to do intellectually, emotionally, physically, and socially as a result of taking their courses, and they had developed elaborate and constantly emerging answers to that inquiry. Furthermore, they had engaged their students in that same intellectual discussion, asking them to think about their own thinking and how they developed both intellectually and emotionally as they learned. To some degree this was an epistemological discussion about the nature of knowing within a particular discipline, but it was also an exploration of how people learn and change as they do so. As we probed our subjects thinking about such matters, we discovered ideas that were remarkably similar to the concepts that emerged in recent decades from the research and theoretical literature on human learning and development. At first, we thought that the best teachers may do something that most of us never undertake, actually read the scholarship on learning and motivation and think about its implications for their teaching. In fact, we discovered that they were no more likely to explore that literature than were their less successful colleagues, yet they had developed ideas and attitudes that have won considerable support from the research on teaching and learning and have strong theoretical foundations. Because they were unusually reflective, they had used their experiences with students to develop sophisticated notions about what it means to learn and about how they could best foster someone else s learning. Some of that thinking centered around their individual disciplines, but much of it cut across traditional divisions of study and offered insights into how people develop intellectually and emotionally. They fashioned ideas about what it means to become an expert or think critically, how to motivate students effectively, how they could create stimulating learning environments, and how they could best assess their students work, among other important We can begin to think about what it means to create a learning university concerned with the learning of both faculty (research) and students (teaching) and the ways in which the learning of one can benefit the other.... it could mean the creation of a community in which professors and students are engaged in rich intellectual conversations in a collegial environment. notions. They came to understand their students, both collectively and individually. They then used those rich insights to create highly effective techniques and classes, constantly changing and shaping their offerings to meet the individual needs of their students. As one of them said, You don t teach a class. You teach a student. In general, they tried to build what we came to call natural critical learning environments. To achieve that end, they were constantly learning new things about themselves, their subjects, and their students. None of them believed that they were born with all of the abilities and insights they needed to become effective educators. They had to work at it. To benefit from their expertise, we will have to work at it also. We can begin by exploring the major ideas about human learning and motivation that appear both in the research and theoretical literature and in the thinking of outstanding teachers (in short, we must do something most of our subjects didn t do: read the literature on learning and teaching). We need an international disciplinary and multi-disciplinary conversation that explores the meaning of learning, the research and theoretical findings on how people learn, the implications of those findings for our practices with students, and how we and our students can best understand the nature and progress of their learning. The insights of highly effective teachers can point the way. They can suggest some tentative conclusions and plenty of questions we need to explore. In that conversation, we can finally put to rest the traditional dichotomy between teaching and research that so often paralyzed higher education in the twentieth century. We can begin to think about what it means to create a learning university concerned with the learning of both faculty (research) and students (teaching) and the ways in which the learning of one can benefit the other. The 14

15 learning university might mean that students participate in the research of their professors, or that they engage in their own course of discovery. But more broadly it could mean the creation of a community in which professors and students are engaged in rich intellectual conversations in a collegial environment. It could be reflective of an attitude about students and their worth, a recognition that efforts to foster learning in others can stimulate our own greater understanding, a commitment on the part of the faculty to building and sustaining a community of learners. At its core, such a community could be defined by engagement, by commitment of faculty and students to sustaining the community and its conversations. How do we create such a learning community? We saw major elements of it emerging in the classrooms and other places where our subjects worked with students. Their experiences can inform our efforts, but we can t just bottle their wisdom or procedures and drink it for breakfast. We have to develop our own understanding and invent the methods that will work best for our students. We must become both routine experts in which we know all the best practices, and adaptive ones in which we recognize (and value) both the necessity and opportunity for invention. Institutions can play a major role in fostering the conversations necessary for those inventions to emerge. Some major universities are already beginning to do so with conferences on advancing university learning. My school, New York University, is planning such a program. For the last six years, Northwestern University has sponsored a three-day program on our study, featuring some of the teachers we researched. In 2004, NYU and the Searle Center at Northwestern will hold a similar program (see But more institutions must sponsor such gatherings. The disciplinary organizations must also join that effort. We must recognize both the ethical and intellectual reasons for doing so. It is inherently selfish to concentrate only on the learning of faculty members and ignore obligations to the development of our students, but it also impractical. We cannot long sustain an intellectual community that pits one generation s learning against the advancement of all others. Education with a big E Professor T.S. Andy Hor Department of Chemistry National University of Singapore Winner of the National University of Singapore s Outstanding Educator Award for There are only four types of professors: they make students sleep, sad, angry or hungry for more. Many professors have the ability to bore students to tears. They read from the script, regurgitate wholesale from standard textbooks, monotonously go through fact after fact, stare at the board as if there were no audience, and talk in a language that only their pets can understand. They never muster enough courage to face the mirror and see how they teach. They never learn. Some professors try to teach well. In fact, some even try too hard, but the communication line does not work - there is no signal, mere noise. You do give them A for effort. When they are stuck in Route One, they open up Route Two. They attend workshops and pick up tips and hints. They care about students feedback. The sad truth is, at the end of the day, there is just no rapport with the class. Students give them consolation marks but no more. How far can sympathy carry us in life? Teaching and research are intellectually complementary, but in the real world, they often seem to be in conflict. How many times have you heard students complain that their professors care everything about research but nothing about teaching? All academics are paid to teach but do you know that many are happy to do research for free? You see professors glow and roar about their research ideas, but do they show the same excitement about new ideas in teaching? They spend day and night writing research papers and grant proposals, but would they burn midnight oil to develop a creative course for their students? 15

16 Students are angry, angry that they pay school fees to be taught by these professors. If you were them, you would be too. The other professors are those that you wish to be on your payroll. They see students beyond students, classroom beyond classroom and teaching beyond teaching. Effective teaching must be driven by effective learning. Without going into the students thoughts, one can never understand the learning process, let alone teach. Understanding the weakness in learning is often the key to the strength in one s teaching. The boundary of classroom is defined by the professor. Good professors are not limited by the physical boundary because they bring the world into their classroom. Learning becomes an experience of life. Learning with the world at your feet is what learning is about. Teaching without education at heart is eating without tasting. The great professors engage students not only in their thoughts but also their intellectual development. They inspire students to actively seek knowledge, setting them onto the rewarding path of life-long self-learning. They produce great scholars who are learned, not simply educated. This engagement is the key in education; it is this process that makes education begin with a big E. Nine principles to guide teaching and learning Professor Peter McPhee Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic) The University of Melbourne The Academic Board of the University of Melbourne last year adopted an inspiring document outlining the principles underpinning the University s teaching and learning objectives. Nine Principles Guiding Teaching and Learning in the University of Melbourne is a statement of the hallmarks of good teaching in a research-led university. The Nine Principles are: 1. An atmosphere of intellectual excitement 2. An intensive research culture permeating all teaching and learning activities 3. A vibrant and embracing social context 4. An international and culturally diverse curriculum and learning community 5. Explicit concern and support for individual development 6. Clear academic expectations and standards 7. Learning cycles of experimentation, feedback and assessment 8. Premium quality learning resources and technologies 9. An adaptive curriculum As the authors Richard James and Gabrielle Baldwin, from the University s Centre for the Study of Higher Education, explain, these principles reflect the balance of evidence in the research literature on the conditions under which student learning thrives. Each principle has a direct bearing on the quality of students intellectual development and their overall experience of university life. The first four principles relate to the broad intellectual environment of the University while the remaining five describe specific components of the teaching and learning experience. Each principle is directly relevant to students experience of university life, regardless of whether they are undergraduate, postgraduate coursework or postgraduate research students. The University is committed to providing an excellent campus-based education and to the centrality of teacher-student interaction in this increasingly technological era. If the notion of a campus as an exciting place for students and their teachers is to survive, however, the teacher-student relationship needs regular re-thinking and reemphasizing. Our teaching and learning programs, underpinned by these nine principles, are designed to develop distinctive attributes in our graduates. As we know, students develop a range of generic skills along with the knowledge base they acquire through their university courses. Enabling them to recognize and hone these skills is, however, both a challenge and a 16

17 pressing need. Broad generic skills - such as critical thinking, a capacity for independent learning, leadership and related personal skills - do not necessarily spring to mind when students reflect on what they have gained from their years of study. We know from course experience questionnaires that students feel they receive a good education at Melbourne - but not all of them identify the broad personal aptitudes they develop through their student experiences and campus life. The process of articulating these skills to students is an important challenge - students should know that they are learning about not just the French Revolution or Victorian flora, important though this knowledge is, but also gaining an education in a wider sense. The Nine Principles is a living document that reflects the balance of evidence in the research literature according to which student learning is enriched when informed by their teachers research. The second of the Nine Principles is to create An intensive research culture permeating all teaching and learning activities. Research-based teaching occurs when teaching is enriched by the teacher s own original research, so that not only does the content draw upon the teacher s research in that area, but students are also exposed to the teacher s research experiences and approaches. The teaching-research nexus should, however, be a richer one than an incorporation of our research into what we teach. It was addressed in the annual Menzies Oration, delivered by the Vice-Chancellor of McGill University, Dr Bernard Shapiro, in October last year. Dr Shapiro defined the proper function of the teaching-research nexus as embedding research values throughout the university, and in particular in developing students who are intellectually and morally autonomous. Effective research-based teaching therefore develops high-order graduate attributes valuable to the individual, employers and the wider community. It also fosters intellectual curiosity and creativity and ensures that Australia has available to it the next generation of students excited by, and dedicated to, research. Dr Shapiro expressed concern that undergraduates commonly have too little contact with their university s most eminent researchers, challenging research-intensive universities to find ways to create such contact. Another specific challenge shared by all Australian universities is that of effective teaching and assessment of very large classes. Total student enrolments have grown by 36 per cent across Australia over the last ten years; however, staff numbers have generally remained steady or declined at almost all Australian universities. Between 1993 and 2000, national student:staff ratios have increased from about 15:1 to 19:1. Increases in student:staff ratios obviously impinge directly upon the staff time available for consultation with and giving feedback to each student, the core of quality teaching and learning. Large classes are not necessarily an impediment to effective teaching, but they do require imaginative strategies. In recent years, some of the recipients of our teaching awards - such as Nilss Olekalns in Economics and Commerce, and Doreen Thomas in Engineering - have demonstrated how it is possible in classes with many hundreds of students to engage them effectively and to develop forms of assessment which are individualized despite class sizes. Among the most important activities of the Academic Board at Melbourne this year is a University-wide review of assessment and grading practices and how these relate to the quality of student learning. It will build on the excellent report by the Centre for the Study of Higher Education for the Australian Universities Teaching Committee. Entitled Assessing Learning in Australian Universities, this report is available electronically at: docs/assessinglearning Our review of assessment is considering whether all subject or course descriptions should address how specific attributes are developed by particular assessment tasks. Well-chosen types of assessment not only provide useful feedback to students on their acquisition of knowledge: they also develop the generic skills and attributes we believe our graduates should have. Nine Principles Guiding Teaching and Learning in the University of Melbourne: the framework for a first-class teaching and learning environment is available at: 9principles.pdf 17

18 Engaging students in large classes: challenging some of the learning myths Dr Christine A Stanley Assistant Dean of Faculties Associate Professor, Dept of Educational Administraton and Human Resource Development, Texas A&M University Dr M Erin Porter Senior Lecturer, Dept of Management Science & Information Systems McCombs School of Business The University of Texas, Austin Large classes are a fact of life on many college and university campuses worldwide. Faced with enormous challenges, such as decreased funding from governmental sectors, increased criticism about the quality of student learning, increased pressure of accountability, and increased student enrolments, higher education institutions strive to find creative ways to meet the learning needs of students in large classes. At the University of Texas at Austin, the institution with the largest single campus student body in the United States (52,000+), faculty teach over 7,000 courses annually, and more than 650 of those classes contain 100 or more students. It is the rare professor who remains undaunted when facing 100, 200, or even 500 students in a classroom. Large classes are often the gateway courses to students major fields of study. Two years ago, we garnered some 34 authors for our 2002 edited book, Engaging Large Classes: Strategies and Techniques for College Faculty. We assumed that there are conflicting ideas on how to teach large classes. We learned that all the contributors promote innovative student learning in large classes across disciplines. The message from our book is clear. Teaching large classes poses numerous, yet surmountable challenges! As Doug Andrews, Assistant Dean of the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California says, A large class may be any class where its size requires you to think about the efficacy and efficiency of your traditional teaching style. Conversations with faculty, administrators, students, and parents uncovered some basic assumptions about learning in large classes. The contributors from our book clearly demonstrate that these commonly held beliefs are myths. Myth 1: Large Classes Are Ineffective For Student Engagement Emily Hoover, Professor of Horticulture at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities says, I ve observed that students are spectators who struggle with apathy, inattention, poor attendance, discomfort with approaching the instructor, failure to prepare for class, and failure to take responsibility in learning when large classes are taught passively. Breaking down student passivity involves a myriad of teaching strategies including, but not limited to, problem-based case studies, think-pair-share activities, role-play, simulations, discussion software, evocative multimedia, associational brainstorming, hypothetical or hypo cases, team learning, and academic controversies. Many professors find it an asset to share the enterprise by melding their educational philosophy with their teaching methodology. Myth 2: It Is Impossible To Build Rapport In Large Classes An overwhelming theme discussed by large class instructors is their relationships with students to decrease anonymity. An instructor needs to select a get to know the students method compatible with large class enrolments and with their own teaching goals, philosophy, and style. Choosing not to engage with students is not an alternative. Laurie Jaeger and Deborah Kochevar, Professors of Veterinary Medicine at Texas A&M University, work to develop a professional bond with students. Other professors use classroom space to their advantage by making sure that they are assigned to a room that is conducive to active learning. Rapport is built through humour, asking students for feedback on their learning, effective listening skills, use of icebreakers on the first day of class, and developing attitudes and behaviours that demonstrate concern 18

19 for learning. Through learning activities that respect the value of student social and cultural differences, instructors are able to create and sustain excitement for learning in large classes. Myth 3: Anybody Can Teach A Large Class Effective teaching and learning in large classes is hard work. The faculty who teach large classes are chosen carefully for teaching excellence, supported by their departments, and rewarded for their contribution and motivation. They develop, reflect on, and refine their teaching skills. In the May 9, 2003 cover story issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education, on The best teaching doesn t always happen around a seminar table, Richard Halgin, Professor of Psychology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, indicates, I don t want them to come to class for tests. I want to make them want to come to class by making the class interesting. Halgin creates a teaching team comprised of staff such as experienced graduate and undergraduate teaching assistants. Working together on course design and management, he is able to maximize the learning experience for students in the classroom. Often the most effective instructors of large classes have a well-deserved reputation and formidable talent with large audiences; this is often called star quality. Myth 4: It Is Easy To Manage A Large Class Many instructors agree that one of the most immediate differences in teaching a large class versus a small one is the planning and the time that course preparation requires. Decisions about context, course design, evaluation of student learning outcomes, grading, learning resources, assignments, and classroom decorum are magnified when preparing to teach and manage a large class. Instructional methodology changes incrementally in size from 100 to 250 to 500 students. Steven Tomlinson, Lecturer in Finance at the University of Texas, Austin, emphasizes the importance of naming the truth in the room. I asked each student to look around. This course is more than an economics class. It s a management challenge. Look at you: 200 people diverse people, representing a variety of interests, a wide range of skills, and a host of competing objectives. Classroom management and civility can be enhanced by developing what Linda Nilson at Clemson University terms a social engineering approach to planning which is (1) the decision-making process involved to bring out the best performance in people, and (2) the systems in place to encourage and reward such behaviours. Through the development of clear expectations and positive learning outcomes, instructors and students are able to demonstrate a sense of achievement in teaching and learning. Conclusion A key question that prompted research on class size in the early twentieth century (Edmondson & Mulder, 1924) which still remains in the minds of many stakeholders in the new millennium is, Does an increase in class size lead to a loss of quality of education? This question is even more important as college and university finances change on a regular basis. While results of earlier research are conflicting, there is evidence that the variables involved in teaching large classes are complex and they are affected by numerous instructional dimensions (Wulff, Nyquist, & Abbott, 1987). More recent research (Gilbert, 1995) reveals that class size is not the major determining factor of successful learning or teaching. We have found from experience and observation of large classes that it is time to refocus research on what the instructor does in the classroom to engage student learning. References Bartlett, T. (2003, May 9). Big, not bad: The best teaching does not always happen around a seminar table. Chronicle of Higher Education, pp. A12- A14. Edmondson, J. B., & Mulder, F. J. (1924). Size of a class as a factor in university instruction. Journal of Educational Research, 9, Gilbert, S. (1995, Winter). Quality education: Does class size matter? CSSHE Professional Profile, 14, pp Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada. Stanley, C. A., & Porter, M. E. (2002). (Eds.). Engaging large classes: Strategies and techniques for college faculty. Bolton, MA: Anker Publishers. Wulff, D., Nyquist, N., & Abbott, R. D. (1987, Winter). Students perceptions of large classes (pps ) in M. Weimer (Ed.), Teaching large classes well. New Directions for Teaching and Learning, No. 32. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. 19

20 What makes good university teaching? Associate Professor Lynne Hunt Associate Dean (Teaching and Learning) Faculty of Computing, Health and Science Edith Cowan University Joint winner of the Prime Minister s Award for Australian University Teacher of the Year, Good university teaching and good business practice have much in common. Both are based on a reflective plan, do and review continuous, quality improvement cycle. Both have identifiable philosophies and strategies focused on outcomes. In brief, there s no point teaching unless learning takes place, just as there s no point producing goods that nobody wants to buy. Both are shaped by political and social contexts. Finally, both contribute to present and future social capital. At this point resemblance ends because the contribution of education to Australian society cannot be understood solely in terms of profit, loss and consumerism. Personal development, civil society and the social good are the qualitative outcomes of the Australian education system. Some of my students have joked that they would like to wear a badge that declares, We are not customers. In these few words they challenge the whole notion of education as a product that is consumed. Rather, they see education as a caring profession. When I became joint winner of the Prime Minister s Award for Australian University Teacher of the Year, I received a letter of congratulation from a student I had taught in the 1970s. She wrote, Lynne, I ve been wondering what it is that made you such a good teacher for me. I remember you as very supportive and affirming of me as an individual and as a young student teacher. That relationship you fostered affirmed me and supported my learning and my growth. Not one memorable teaching strategy in sight! What was remembered was the quality of the teaching and learning relationship. I recently invited a group of tertiary teachers to reflect on their school life and their tertiary studies to identify stories that illustrated good teaching. To my surprise not one teaching strategy was revealed. Instead, the stories were about teachers who cared for their students. They recalled charismatic teachers with passion for their subjects who had influenced their lives. But this is nebulous fuzzy stuff to offer in reply to the question posed for this article: What makes good university teaching? The aim of good university teaching is good university learning. It s a small shift in thinking to stop talking about good university teaching and to start talking about good university learning, but it has significant implications for how university curricula and teaching strategies are developed. If you want to learn to ride a bike you have to get on it and ride. In other words, quality learning is learning by doing. It is also problem-centred and experiential learning. These related approaches all require the active involvement of students in constructing their own knowledge. As a consequence, good university teachers are the guide on the side, not the sage on the stage. Good lecturers resource students and facilitate the skills needed to complete their assignments - the vehicle for student learning. New technologies offer increased scope for students to collaborate online in the preparation of assignments that engage them with the global community. These opportunities have internationalized university curricula in a manner suited to the workplace demands of the future. They have also decreased the tyranny of distance by providing improved access to tertiary studies for rural and remote students. This has implications for equity that I responded to in a program called Click Around ECU a competition to develop a web-site about university life. This transition to university competition aims to introduce tertiary studies to students with little experience of post-secondary education. The transition out of university into employment is equally important. For this reason I have contributed to the development of work-based learning at Edith Cowan University to prepare students for the workforce. Work-based learning 20

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